Ok: Come along Ponds.

Passable: Fish Fingers and Custard.

Terrible: Who da man?

I'll take your word for it. But just speculating, while the title sequence with the TARDIS flying over London and the stuff with the paintings might have looked nice in 3-D, I'm worried that with some of the darker scenes, such as everything on Gallifrey 3-D glasses would have created what I call the "sunglasses effect."

Meh, I find 3-D is overrated anyway. Even movies where it does work, I find look better in 2-D anyway.

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Well, it's not like I want to start watching every movie in 3D. Aside from the cost consideration, I have heard that a lot of movies have bad, tacked-on 3D. But there are cases where it's integral and serves a purpose, such as Gravity. Still, I did find it a bit gimmicky there, generally more a novelty than anything else, and sometimes a bit of a distraction. Too many shots in that movie seemed designed just for the sake of shoving things into extreme close-up and going "Ooh, look, depth perception!" Although the movie was pretty much all about the amazing visuals, so I guess that wasn't quite as intrusive as it could've been.

I though that first moving shot of the 3D "Gallifrey Falls" painting looked really good and 3-dimensional even on my 2D TV screen, so I do wonder what it looked like in 3D. That shot following Clara's motorcycle through the TARDIS doors into the console room must've looked pretty cool in 3D too.

I'll take your word for it. But just speculating, while the title sequence with the TARDIS flying over London and the stuff with the paintings might have looked nice in 3-D, I'm worried that with some of the darker scenes, such as everything on Gallifrey 3-D glasses would have created what I call the "sunglasses effect."

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Since I'm a 3D novice, could you clarify your meaning? Are you just saying that it would make the shot look too dim? Because I noticed something in Gravity that might be completely different from what you're talking about, and I'm wondering whether it's common. On some of the shots of a bright spacesuited figure in the distance against the black of space, I got a bit of a double image that was there even when I closed one eye, so it must've been the result of the glasses failing to filter out one of the images completely. I'm wondering if that was a fault in my specific pair of glasses or in the theater's projection system, or if it's an endemic flaw in the process.

Meh, I find 3-D is overrated anyway. Even movies where it does work, I find look better in 2-D anyway.

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Well, it's not like I want to start watching every movie in 3D. Aside from the cost consideration, I have heard that a lot of movies have bad, tacked-on 3D. But there are cases where it's integral and serves a purpose, such as Gravity. Still, I did find it a bit gimmicky there, generally more a novelty than anything else, and sometimes a bit of a distraction. Too many shots in that movie seemed designed just for the sake of shoving things into extreme close-up and going "Ooh, look, depth perception!" Although the movie was pretty much all about the amazing visuals, so I guess that wasn't quite as intrusive as it could've been.

I though that first moving shot of the 3D "Gallifrey Falls" painting looked really good and 3-dimensional even on my 2D TV screen, so I do wonder what it looked like in 3D. That shot following Clara's motorcycle through the TARDIS doors into the console room must've looked pretty cool in 3D too.

I'll take your word for it. But just speculating, while the title sequence with the TARDIS flying over London and the stuff with the paintings might have looked nice in 3-D, I'm worried that with some of the darker scenes, such as everything on Gallifrey 3-D glasses would have created what I call the "sunglasses effect."

Click to expand...

Since I'm a 3D novice, could you clarify your meaning? Are you just saying that it would make the shot look too dim? Because I noticed something in Gravity that might be completely different from what you're talking about, and I'm wondering whether it's common. On some of the shots of a bright spacesuited figure in the distance against the black of space, I got a bit of a double image that was there even when I closed one eye, so it must've been the result of the glasses failing to filter out one of the images completely. I'm wondering if that was a fault in my specific pair of glasses or in the theater's projection system, or if it's an endemic flaw in the process.

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What you saw is often referred to as ghosting in the A/V media online fora. It is related, I believe, to something called crosstalk. If I understand the tech correctly, the problem is usually related to the projection system rather than the media itself. If you peruse a few A/V forum sites, you'll get a lot more info on this.

Well, it's not like I want to start watching every movie in 3D. Aside from the cost consideration, I have heard that a lot of movies have bad, tacked-on 3D. But there are cases where it's integral and serves a purpose, such as Gravity. Still, I did find it a bit gimmicky there, generally more a novelty than anything else, and sometimes a bit of a distraction.

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There's two separate problems to keep in mind with 3D movies that lead to the 3D being decried as tacked-on. Yes, some have gimmicky shots, like you said. But the bigger problem with many 3D movies is that for those which are not shot in 3D, the post-conversion tends to end up with more of a "diorama" effect than genuine depth like with movies shot with 3D cameras. (Day of the Doctor falls into the latter category.)

Well, it's not like I want to start watching every movie in 3D. Aside from the cost consideration, I have heard that a lot of movies have bad, tacked-on 3D. But there are cases where it's integral and serves a purpose, such as Gravity. Still, I did find it a bit gimmicky there, generally more a novelty than anything else, and sometimes a bit of a distraction.

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There's two separate problems to keep in mind with 3D movies that lead to the 3D being decried as tacked-on. Yes, some have gimmicky shots, like you said. But the bigger problem with many 3D movies is that for those which are not shot in 3D, the post-conversion tends to end up with more of a "diorama" effect than genuine depth like with movies shot with 3D cameras. (Day of the Doctor falls into the latter category.)

...I'm worried that with some of the darker scenes, such as everything on Gallifrey 3-D glasses would have created what I call the "sunglasses effect."

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Since I'm a 3D novice, could you clarify your meaning? Are you just saying that it would make the shot look too dim?

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Yes, I believe he is. Most movie theaters run their projectors on the dim side anyways; the polarizing glasses generally used in theaters for 3D make the brightness even worse.

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There can be anywhere from 15-30% light loss with 3D, with the final Harry Potter film there were scenes where it was difficult to see who it was on screen at any given time. You can also end up with ghost images, which are distracting. Also because of the way the 3D works things can begin to look smaller when closer to the screen so you end up with something that is supposed to be huge suddenly looking small because of the way you perceive the 3D effect.

I just caught another cool DW special on On Demand. I think it's called The Science of Doctor Who or something similar. It's a lecture by Brian Cox about Space-Time and such. Nothing I didn't already know, but it's always fun to watch, and I love Brian Cox. But the really interesting thing about it is that there is a framing sequence throughout with Brian Cox meeting the Doctor (as played by Matt Smith); it's pretty funny.

Well, considering the intros were about theater etiquette (mostly Strax yelling at us to turn off our cell phones), it wouldn't really make sense to see them anywhere other than in a theater.

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It would make sense because they were fun things that were worth preserving for posterity. Plenty of things that were meant "only for theaters" have been preserved on home video, like those Warner Bros. theatrical cartoons with gags about the characters interacting with silhouettes of people in the theater seats, or those '50s B-movies with interactive gimmicks introduced by the director, such as The Tingler.

Since I'm a 3D novice, could you clarify your meaning? Are you just saying that it would make the shot look too dim?

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Basically. 3-D Glasses give the picture a darker tint which a lot of the time just makes me feel like I'm wearing sunglasses. Not every movie is like this, I didn't notice this problem with Avatar or Prometheus for example, but far too many are.

Since I'm a 3D novice, could you clarify your meaning? Are you just saying that it would make the shot look too dim? Because I noticed something in Gravity that might be completely different from what you're talking about, and I'm wondering whether it's common. On some of the shots of a bright spacesuited figure in the distance against the black of space, I got a bit of a double image that was there even when I closed one eye, so it must've been the result of the glasses failing to filter out one of the images completely. I'm wondering if that was a fault in my specific pair of glasses or in the theater's projection system, or if it's an endemic flaw in the process.

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I think I've seen this as well, but on the 2D versions. Go to the scene where Queen Elizabeth's men surround the three Doctors. One of the guardsmen has a pike pointed at the camera, and the blade of the weapon has a peculiar, ghostly double-image. I've been wondering if this is an artifact of the 3D camera used, or was just a production glitch.

As for the dimming effect, I've seen it often enough in 2D movies when the theater forgets to swap out the 3D lenses on the projector. I always assumed the actual 3D movies would be brighter because there were two images being projected instead of one.

Technically, if they had a projectionist adjusting the picture for every showing they could do things to mitigate the dimming effect but nope, it's no brighter and you have the dual effect of darkness due to the polarising lens and the glasses.

Wow, that's surprising. I wonder why Moffat didn't want to even consider using Joe Aherne as a director (other than it's been 8 years since he worked on the show). Moffat clearly has a good working relationship with Nick Hurran, who directed some of the best recent episodes as well as one of the upcoming Sherlock episodes.

From what I understand, Ahearne was so exhausted by working on five episodes more or less in a row (because they'd asked him to handle the season finale at the last minute so as to keep Eccleston happy after seeing how well they worked together on the Dalek/Father's Day pair; some reports suggest that another director had already been hired and had to be paid off as a result) that his partner effectively barred him from returning to the show: sort of "If you want to kill yourself on that show, don't expect me to stay here and witness it." That might be a bit of an obstacle...

How reliable is that site? Can't help but wonder if someone just made that story up on the back of Eccleston's tongue-in-cheek remark about returning for the 100th anniversary if Ahearne directed. Then again, I also wonder if Eccleston's joke was prompted by the original request.

Well, that's disappointing. It would be a bummer if those of us who missed the theater showing never got to see them.

Although I'm disappointed in myself for not making more of an effort to see it in the theater.

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I really wanted to see it in the theater. There was a theater showing it right next door to where I work. But I was really tired after work that day and I didn't want to wait around another 2 1/2 hours after work for it to start.

What you saw is often referred to as ghosting in the A/V media online fora. It is related, I believe, to something called crosstalk. If I understand the tech correctly, the problem is usually related to the projection system rather than the media itself. If you peruse a few A/V forum sites, you'll get a lot more info on this.

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I thought "Ghosting" was more like this: [yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y6AvqgiFbIU[/yt]